Worse, he’d had to put up with this father’s lectures every time he’d gotten in trouble when it was possible his old man was just like him. Hell, wouldn’t it be something if he’d gotten his predilection for rough sex from Ray Sr.? That would explain why his mother had taken off years ago and why his old man had paid to keep her in the style she’d become accustomed to, until she drowned in her fancy swimming pool.
RJ realized with a chill that his father might have been behind that accident, as well. But if true, then he really hadn’t known his father at all.
He wheeled his train of thought back to his own problem: Josey Vanderliner. His fear now was that a judge would put Ella’s care in Josey’s hands. Unless Josey was arrested for murder, of course.
But RJ wasn’t willing to put his life in the hands of a jury. He hated to think who would be more believable on the stand. That sweet-looking Josephine Vanderliner with the mother who was practically a vegetable. Or himself.
No, Josey had to disappear off the face of the earth. This was one body that could not be found.
Then he would surface and blame all of it on Josey. With her fingerprints on the weapon that had murdered his father, he didn’t think he’d have that much trouble selling his story to the police. At least not in California.
It would be harder to explain the rest of what had happened. He thought he could sell the cops on a story that Josey had taken him and Celeste hostage. He had the bullet wound to prove that Josey had shot him. The rest he could say he didn’t know anything about. He could say Josey had knocked him out and he came to underwater in the car. Let them try to prove he had anything to do with Celeste’s death or that of the rancher.
Once he was cleared of any wrongdoing, he would be in charge of Josey’s mother’s care—and her money. He’d put the old lady in the cheapest rest home he could find, one that cost even less than the one his old man had stuck her in. She wouldn’t know the difference anyway.
“TALK TO ME, JOSEY,” Jack said. He took her hand and led her over to the bed. As he sat down on the edge, he pulled her down next to him.
“I should never have involved you in this.”
“It’s too late for that,” he said quietly. “You knew this woman they found, didn’t you?”
Josey closed her eyes for a moment. “Her name was Celeste. I didn’t know her last name. I’d never laid eyes on her before a few days ago.”
Jack could feel Josey trembling and see the terror in her eyes, the same terror he’d seen the day he’d picked her up on the highway. He tried hard to hide his own fear as he asked, “Did you have anything to do with what happened to her?”
“No,” she said with a shudder. “But I was there. I saw RJ unraveling. I saw it coming and I knew what he was capable of. I’d seen him...” Her voice broke.
“Why don’t you start at the beginning.”
She stared into his eyes for a long moment, then nodded slowly. He waited while she collected herself.
“You aren’t going to believe me. I hardly believe it myself.”
He squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll know if you’re lying.”
She smiled at that. “You think you know me that well?”
“Yeah,” he said simply. “I do.”
Josey took a breath and let it out slowly. “I guess it starts with my family. My father was Joseph Vanderliner.”
Jack’s eyebrows shot up. “The Joseph Vanderliner of Vanderliner Oil?”
She nodded. “That’s the reaction I’ve been getting all of my life.”
“I knew you came from money, just not that much money,” he said. “I read that your father died a few years ago, and your mother...”
“She took my father’s death hard. She was never a strong woman. I hadn’t realized how weak she was until she married my stepfather, Ray Allan Evans Sr.”
“You didn’t like him.”
“At first I thought he was all right. Until my mother had a car accident. The police said she’d been drinking, but she didn’t like alcohol. She never had more than a glass of wine and usually not even that.”
“This accident. Was your mother...”
“She survived, but she suffered massive head trauma. She will never recover.” Her voice broke again. “Ray Sr. put her in a nursing home and took over her finances, which included my own. My father had died suddenly and hadn’t updated his will, so my inheritance was still tied up with my mother’s. I had a job at Vanderliner Oil, but when Ray Sr. took over he had me fired. I sued him, because I desperately needed to get my hands on my inheritance so I could take my mother out of that horrible rest home he’d stuck her in and get her proper care.”
Josey rubbed a hand over her forehead. “My father’s will was just ambiguous enough that my stepfather had control over not only all of my mother’s and my money, but Vanderliner Oil, too. And he was spending the money as if there was no tomorrow.”
She let go of his hand and stood up, pacing in front of the bed. “I should have been suspicious when my stepfather called and said he wanted to settle out of court, no lawyers. He had arranged, he said, to give me part of my inheritance as a show of faith. All I could think was that if I could get my hands on enough money I could help my mother. I should have known it was a trap.”
MCCALL HUNG UP from her call to Detective Diaz and heard the fax machine buzz. She walked down the hall and checked. Sure enough, it was the phone logs she’d been waiting for from Frank Hanover’s house.
Her gaze went to the most
